PISCATAWAY — Less than a month ago, new Rutgers punter Tim Gleeson was resigned to the fact that he would be spending this football season at home in Australia.

He spent the 2012 season at the University of Wyoming, last season at Santa Barbara City College (California) after leaving Wyoming due to what he called “personal reasons” and this summer, he thought he was through considering his options. He didn’t like those options, so he crossed the Pacific Ocean to his home country, knowing he had a redshirt year to burn.

There were schools interested in the 6-foot-2, 195-pound junior beginning in January, so he figured he would take a few online classes, use his redshirt year and bide his time until 2015.

Then, the phone rang.

Gleeson’s American-style punting coach, fellow-Aussie and one-time Green Bay Packers punter Nathan Chapman, was on the other end. Chapman told his pupil he had spoken with Scarlet Knights special teams coach Bob Fraser and that they were offering a full scholarship.

From there, everything has been a blur for Gleeson.

“We had a few conversations, my academics were cleared and they had a scholarship for me,” said Gleeson during his first opportunity to meet the press at Rutgers Media Day on Sunday. “I happily took that and I found myself here about two weeks later.”

Gleeson is eligible immediately and is expected to challenge redshirt junior and Basking Ridge native Joe Roth for the job of replacing last year’s starter Nick Marsh ahead of the Scarlet Knights’ Aug. 28 season opener against Washington State in Seattle. The timing is not great as Gleeson didn’t arrive in the United States until Friday, which means he missed the first week of training camp.

“I spoke with the coaches and they said they’ll start me at the bottom of the depth chart, which is understandably fair enough,” said Gleeson, whose brother Will is a redshirt freshman punter at Mississippi. “I haven’t proven anything yet, but hopefully in the next few days, I can get the pads on and show what I’m capable of.”

Gleeson chooses to look at it as at least he got over here quickly once the process got moving.

Once he committed, he sent Rutgers his transcripts and that paperwork was processed in about a week. Once that was done, an interview through the United States Embassy to allow him to attend school here was expedited, as was the visa process. He said the whole thing only took about two weeks, which is generally unheard of for an Australian athlete trying to attend college in the U.S.

“I must credit the administration here at Rutgers, they really moved everything quickly and got the process going for me to come here,” Gleeson said. “When I went to Wyoming, that whole process took about four weeks, which is also fast, so the two weeks it took me to get here was remarkable.”

Now that Gleeson is here, it’s time to get down to the actual business of football.

As a teenager, Gleeson ascended to the highest level of Australian rules football, but he sustained a serious shoulder injury when he was 18. At that time, he had a decision to make whether or not he wanted to pursue Australian rules football or go a different route. A friend and fellow-countryman playing at the University of Hawaii, Scott Harding, put him in contact with Chapman, who runs Prokick Australia, an academy focused on teaching Australian players how to translate those skills into American-style punting.

After getting through a Prokick tryout, Gleeson spent all of 2011 there training under Chapman before earning a scholarship from Wyoming.

Four years after giving up Australian rules for American-style, he is at his third school with yet another chance to make a name for himself on this side of the world.

“He’ll get acclimated and like everything we do, we’ll put a competition up,” Fraser said. “Whoever the best player is will play and that’s the way we do it at every position on this team.”

Gleeson punted twice during Monday’s intra-squad scrimmage.

“I think both his kicks were kind of sky kicks and it looks like he has the ability to do what Marsh did, where he has the flop kick when it’s end-over-end and you kind of stop it,” coach Kyle Flood said. “I think that’s a valuable weapon for your defense, when you do get stopped around midfield. If you’ve got a guy who can kind of stop the ball somewhere inside the 10-yard line, you’ve got a much better chance of getting it back in good field position.”

Notes

Flood said injured left guard Kaleb Johnson “looked good” in his return to practice. ... Flood is hoping to decide on a No. 2 quarterback soon, though he said it wasn’t clear cut on the field if Mike Bimonte or Chris Laviano performed better Monday. ... Flood was pleased with the starters on both sides of the ball in the scrimmage but is looking for more out of his second- and third-teamers.